Kāpiti College Library

Notes

This little book with big ideas features eight diverse, well-known and emerging women writers. They are: Tusiata Avia, Steff Green, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, Charlotte Simmonds, Michele Leggott, Trish Harris, Te Awhina Arahanga and Robin Hyde (the only non-living writer).

They are novelists, poets, essayists, playwrights, memoirists and bloggers. The important thing they have in common is that they all share the lived experience of disability.

In Here we are, read us, they talk frankly about the intersection of disability and writing, sharing the insights and experience that enrich their work.

“Poetry is a language to hang on to when other languages start to disappear. I want to join those who travel light and lift darkness,” writes Michele Leggott.

In the book’s introduction, it says: “When the voice of disabled writers is strong, their words, our words, can transform worlds.”

Trish Harris, co-founder of Crip the Lit, which published the book, says: “Disabled writers producing quality writing can make an important contribution to the writing world, amplifying the disability voice as part of the human experience.”

Robyn Hunt, co- founder of Crip the Lit, says that disabled people have been a neglected audience. “Many of us have grown up without seeing ourselves and our lives realistically reflected in the books and media surrounding us. But we have lots to say, and we know there are voices to be heard and people who want to hear them. We want young disabled people to hear and be those voices.